Aaron Aaronsohn

Aaron Aaronsohn ( _he. אהרון אהרנסון; 1876–May 15, 1919) was a renowned Romanian-born Jewish agronomist, botanist, traveler, entrepreneur, and Zionist politician.

Aaronsohn is remembered primarily as the discoverer of wild emmer ("Triticum dicoccoides"), which he believed to be "the mother of the wheat." He was also the founder and head of Nili, a ring of Jewish patriots spying for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during World War I. Owing to information supplied by Nili to the British Army, General Edmund Allenby was able to mount a surprise attack on Beersheba, unexpectedly bypassing strong Ottoman defenses in Gaza.

Biography

Aaron Aaronsohn was born in Bacău, Romania, and brought to Palestine, then part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, at the age of six, when his parents were among the founders of Zichron Yaakov, one of the pioneer Jewish agricultural settlements of the First Aliyah.

After his study in France, sponsored by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Aaron Aaronsohn botanically mapped Palestine and its surroundings and became a leading expert on the subject. On his 1906 field trip to Mount Hermon, he discovered Triticum dicoccoides, an important find for agronomists and historians of human civilization. It made him world-famous and, on a trip to the United States, he was able to secure financial backing for a research station he established in Atlit - the first experimental station in the Levant.

After the war, Chaim Weizmann called Aaronsohn to work on the Versailles Peace Conference but Aaronsohn was killed in an airplane crash over the English Channel. His research on Eretz Israel and Transjordan flora, as well as part of his exploration diaries, were published posthumously.

Works

* "Agricultural and botanical explorations in Palestine", 1910
* "Reliquiae Aaronsohnianae", 1940

References

* Ronald Florence, "Lawrence and Aaronsohn: T. E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronsohn, and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict", 2007, Viking Adult, ISBN 978-0670063512.
* Chaim Herzog, "Heroes of Israel", 1989, Little Brown and Company, Boston ISBN 0-316-35901-7
* [http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/full/10/10/1509 Molecular Genetic Maps in Wild Emmer Wheat]
* Goldstone, Patricia. "Aaronsohn's Maps: The Untold Story of the Man Who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East". San Diego: Harcourt, 2007. [August 2007]
* Shmuel Katz, "The Aaronsohn Saga", 2007, Gefen Publishing House, Jerusalem ISBN 978-9652294166

External links

* [http://www.zionism-israel.com/bio/biography_aaron_aronson.htm Biography of Aaron Aaronsohn] at [http://www.zionism-israel.com/zionist_biographies.htm Zionism and Israel Information Center Biography Section]
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